Information volume grows, variety increases, velocity increase. Times and places to experience media enlarge, can choose what you want and when – life of continuous partial attention (multi-tasking)

More compelling media – 3d, interactive worlds

“The Daily Me” – can get more relevant information by editing/gatekeepers your sources (e.g. RSS feeds that you select)

More content creators, more opportunities for voting and ventilating.

“Real social networks” are more vivid.

Homo connectus – different sense of

info access

access to themsleves

time use/opportunities to play

personal efficacy

New Tech-User typology

39% motivated by mobility – have wireless, have more content creation, drawn into more deeper use

61% not into mobile lifestyle and it’s peripheral to their lives.

Motivated by Mobility – 5 groups

digital collaborators (8%) lead the pack in assets, actions, attitudes towards technology – geek squad – mostly male, ~39 yrs old (gen X), suburban, married, parents busy folks with busy lives – serve them by being a place for them to jack into internet, place to collaborate and share, ask them for help in getting feedback on your projects – influencers

ambivalent networkers (7%) express worries about connectivity; and some find that mobile devices are intrusive – want to take break from technology, but don’t feel like they can – obligation – ~29 yrs old, male, more students, 83% cell texters, NOT email users – serve them by being a sanctuary, offer gaming, help them figure out SNS etiquette, help them navigate information overload.

media movers (7%) social exchanges are central to this groups of ICTs (rather than work related), not content creators, ~34 yrs old, 87% own digital camera, 90% online health seekers – the people that send you YouTube videos – help them by finding places to store, share and curate their creations

roving nodes (9%) thinking working little league mother, could not give up cell phone, not content creators..way too busy. first majority female group 100% have cell phones, heavy internet use, say tech gives them control – serve them by helping them to be efficient as possible – manage information and avoid overload – would greatly appreciate learning about cloud applications – calendaring, social bookmarking, email, etc.

mobile newbies (8%) – just got a cell phone in past year and it was a life changing experience .. but use cell phone like cell phone, not internet access. ~50 year old, female, just 39% Internet users, don’t create content – serve them by coaching mentoring tech support offer pathways to the wonders of hte web.

Stationary Majority

desktop veterans (13%) online life hit a zenith 3-5 years ago, not into mobile, heaving internet users at home andwork – serve them by staying out of their hair and offering computers with good connections, may want connet

tech indifferent (10%) less than 50% internet or cell phone users – serve them by offering basic tutorials, libraries might e only lifeline to digital age

off the network (14%) no internet or cell phones, some used to have computers, but walked away, like their old stuff – resource issues due to economics – serve them by the traditional library services providing “old media”

Friending libaries are 5+ thingsw

pathways to problem solving information

pathway to personal enrichment –

pathway to entertainment

pathway to new kinds of social networks built around people, media and institutions

pathway to the wisdom of crowds, so you fill your own future here

Challenge: use your hashtag and find more ways during the confernece to nodes to people in their social networks.

So, you’ve probably seen this video this week, but if not….The Twouble with Twitters:

Ha ha. Ha.

Okay, here’s the thing…I’m really trying hard to not be defensive about my Twitter habit. But I’m not going to lie..the first time I was shown that video, my feelings were sort of hurt. While there are people on Twitter who post the most random thoughts and events of their life for purely narcissistic reasons, not everyone is like that. There are lots of great uses for Twitter! Here’s two examples from this week.

I was telling a co-worker about the Bender Baby dinner at AALL 2009. (By the way, did you notice my new blog badges? Nice work, AALL!) I couldn’t remember how I became one, but it occurred to me that I have a big network of more experience law librarians on Twitter to ask. So I did. Within my minutes, I had myanswer.

Today is Ada Lovelace Day. Who was Ada Lovelace?* She is one of the first, if not the first, computer programmers. Which is cool enough, but when you realize that she’s (a) an early woman pioneer in a male dominated field and (b) that, oh by the way, she did this in EIGHTEEN FORTY THREE…well, you might say that Ada Lovelace is, in modern parlance, FULL OF WIN.

Ada Lovelace Day is a day set aside by bloggers to recognize women in technology. So, I’m supposed to highlight a woman in technology that I admire and blog about her. Well, I don’t know if it’s because my area of technology (librarianship) is a field that women have long been successful in or the fact that I am hesitant to single out just one woman, but I have a real embarrassment of riches when it comes to picking someone.

From UK, I can think of Stacey Greenwell and Beth Kraemer who, aside from being really excellent at their jobs and are publishing and presenting machines, have been awesome mentors to me with the tech stuff, as well as with the navigating tenure track madness.

From the rest of Library Land that I’m in contact with….well, I’m definitely not going to try to even single out a couple names.

I guess another part of my inability to recognize only a single person is that I don’t think there’s enough recognition in Library Land for all of the nifty things that people do. I’m not talking just in our normal jobs. (“I just found you a document from an International Agency known to maybe ten people in the world, two of which are standing in this room right now, and you DON’T EVEN SAY ‘THANK YOU’????”) I mean, there’s a lot of people going out of their way to advocate for change, try out new things and otherwise make life easier for their fellow librarians and patrons – often on their own time and without any monetary benefit at all.

(Recent example? Tom Boone’s ScheduAALL 2009 conference scheduling page. I can’t even explain to you how much annual meeting stress that thing has reduced for me. He’s a dude, but whatever…awesome job, Tom!)

There are avenues for recognition….most notably LJ’s Movers and Shakers. But that’s only 50 or so people out of several hundred thousand librarians. (I also note that this year there was not anyone from Kentucky nor were there any law librarians.) The LSW, an organization that I am proud to be a part of, has inaugurated its Shovers and Makers to highlight those other thousands. Go check out both of those lists and be inspired by what librarians all over the world are doing. And while you’re at the Shovers and Makers site, nominate yourself….I did.

On a somewhat related note, the stars have aligned, the travel gods have smiled upon me and starting next Friday I will start a whirlwind conference/meeting trip. I can’t wait! Here’s the schedule:

Saturday, March 28 – Tuesday, March 31: Flying to DC for the Computers in Libraries conference. (The conference where I sort of “found myself” and my Web 2.0 niche in 2007, and I’m really excited about some of the programming this year.)

Wednesday, April 1 – Friday, April 3: Drive to Barren River, KY for the KLA Academic and Special Library/SLA Kentucky Chapter Joint Spring Meeting. (My first event as an SLA member…)

Unfortunately, I think I stretched the goodwill of the travel gods and will not be able to attend the Library 2.0 Symposium at Yale on April 4. But I am going to keep checking travel sites…I only confirmed plans for two of the above three within the past week…so who knows what may happen?

You’ll notice that none of these events are law library centered. Don’t get me wrong, I love my law library peeps (and will be attending AALL, SEAALL and ORALL), but I find there’s something really energizing and educational about talking to librarians from other disciplines. They seem to be able to try things about two years ahead of law libraries. And besides, today’s college freshman is tomorrow’s 1L…it’s good to know what they’re being taught and come to expect about libraries since they’ll be our problem patrons soon.

Anyway, I cannot wait for next week. For one thing, I am in desperate need of a break from work. My joie de vivre is getting harder and harder to hold on to. Due to some budgetary issues, I’m working essentially two jobs right now and still trying to remain active in the profession. Burnout…I haz it.

Secondly, I will not be attending these conferences and meetings alone. My boss likes to kid me that all of my friends live in my computer. While not exactly true, most of my friends are scattered around the country and we have to use technology to keep up with each other. But next week, I get to see them in person! Yay!

I am fortunate in that many of my friends are not just awesome people, but they are awesome librarians. They are Movers and Shakers and Shovers and Makers, from the Empire State to the Golden Gate. So in addition to learning a whole bunch (and I’ll be blogging and tweeting as much as I can to share the love with y’all), I’ll be hanging out and recharging the ol’ batteries with some people that I’m absolutely crazy about.

*She’s also Lord Byron’s daughter, which is a nifty side fact, but I didn’t include it above because I didn’t want to distract from her awesomeness.

Whenever I tell people about using Hashtags on Twitter or Flickr, I’m generally asked “Who decides those things?” The answer is that there are some standard naming conventions that have arisen and basically the hive mind goes into action and everyone sort of comes up with the same hashtag, although there are sometimes disputes.

I can’t imagine why that answer isn’t satisfactory to everyone that I give it to.

Well, now there’s a new “authority source” for hastags….Tagalus. It’s a hashtag dictionary that anyone can add to. Now people can “claim” hashtags if they’re organizing an event or, if they see a hashtag that they’re unsure of, look it up here. The aall2009 hashtag wasn’t defined so I filled that in.

The avatar pics from my friends are now rounded. I hate rounded corners.

The “home page” does not distinguish between status messages, links (the former posted items), and application activities. Also, there is not way to separate out these distinct functions. So, the fact that Friend X threw a sheep at someone I don’t know (a fact I could really care less about) is now taking attention from Friend Y posting a pertinent news story (something that I do like to follow – my FB friends shared links is where I find some of the most interesting things!)

There’s a pointless side bar that shows “highlights” but I have to really look hard to see what’s a posted item, what’s a group, what’s a note, etc.

Notfications, group invites and friends requests are hidden along the top, and easily missed.

However, thanks to the wonderful power of RSS feed readers, I can still get at what I want without having to take the time to sort through the noise created by the re-design. Instead of going step by step, here’s a powerpoint show that explains what you need to know:

As the Washington Post and Mashable have reported, the Obama administration is having some trouble implementing an open, collaborative, transparent government within the exisiting government information structure. Never fear, though, because some geeks are on the case….meet the Government 2.0 Club. From it’s website:

Government 2.0 Club is a national organization that brings together leading thinkers from government, academia and industry to share ideas and solutions for leveraging social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to create a more collaborate, efficient and effective government — Government 2.0

It doesn’t explicitly say it, but I’m counting “librarians” within this group and I hope some of us get involved. After all, we know how this information is used. It looks like the website will be the main conduit for information sharing, but there will be unconferences, such as the upcoming camp in March. (Which has already filled up, but even if it weren’t, I somewhat ironically couldn’t attend because I have a KY-GORDORT meeting that day.) So watch those spaces for more information and get involved, if you can.